Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to delivery of content such as advertisements, and more particularly to techniques for determining relative effectiveness of media content items by observing and correlating behavior with media content items to which panelists have been exposed.
Description of Background Art
In recent years, mechanisms by which media content is delivered (television programming, other video, audio, web pages, messages, and the like) have moved from a broadcast model in which the same media content is delivered to many or all consumers at the same time to an addressable model wherein the media content delivered to one consumer can be different than that delivered to another. Addressable set-top boxes facilitate on-demand presentation of specific content items, including pause, rewind, and fast-forward capability. Media content delivered via the Internet or via mobile phone can be personalized, for example by selection and presentation of advertisements targeted to a demographic and/or geographic region associated with the consumer.
For example, an automobile manufacturer may advertise differently depending on the average income associated with the ZIP code of the viewing consumer. An advertisement for an entry-level car model can run in a lower-income ZIP code, while an advertisement for a luxury-level car model can run in a higher-income zip code. Both advertisements play simultaneously in the two different geographic regions.
In some cases, the determination as to which advertisement to present to each consumer is a relatively simple matter; for example, a selection between an entry-level car model advertisement and a luxury-level car model advertisement may simply be based on easily-ascertainable demographic data for a region or community.
However, more sophisticated advertisement selection is much more difficult. Variants of advertisements may be more effective for various populations based on subtle and non-obvious preferences among consumers. For some consumers, a movie trailer emphasizing romantic scenes may be more effective than another trailer for the same movie emphasizing action scenes. Even more subtly, an advertisement employing a male voiceover may be more or less effective, for some audiences, than a similar advertisement employing a female voiceover. Age, gender, income level, and cultural factors may interact in various ways as predictors of the relative effectiveness of the advertisement variants.
Effectiveness of advertisements can be measured by determining how many people buy a product or take some other action after having been exposed to the advertisement. An increase in the number of visits to a company's website can be measured, particularly if a specific page is mentioned in the advertisement. For advertisements delivered via a website, a “click-through” rate can be ascertained, measuring the percentage of consumers that click on the advertisement to see more information about the advertised product or service. However, the relative effectiveness of specific advertisements (or variants) played simultaneously within or among multiple groups often cannot easily be ascertained simply by measuring aggregate website visits.
Media companies and advertisers often engage in expensive and time-consuming market research to ascertain the relative effectiveness of various advertisements for various populations. Often, such market entails the use of focus groups, professional marketing specialists, statistical analyses, and the like.
Because of the expense and complexity of such research, it is often difficult or impossible for advertisers (or other content providers) to make real-time determinations or adjustments in content selection. When an increase or decrease in effectiveness of an advertisement with respect to a group of consumers is detected, research may be performed to identify ways to improve the selection and targeting of advertisements based on the new data. However, such research takes time and cannot generally be implemented in real-time. Accordingly, existing techniques for selecting and presenting advertisements are unable to quickly adapt to changes in measured effectiveness of such advertisements.
What is needed, therefore, is a system and method for real-time analysis to determine effectiveness of media content items such as advertisements. What is further needed is a system and method for selecting advertisements and advertisement variants based on measured effectiveness of advertisements with respect to particular consumers or groups of consumers. What is needed is a system and method that obtains a measure of effectiveness for an advertisement or other content item, and applies such data in selecting and/or tailoring content to be presented to a group of consumers.